GARBAGE HAULERS PROTEST UNION PICKETS WPB CITY HALL

WEST PALM BEACH -- A handful of city garbage haulers picketed City Hall on Wednesday, declaring that "garbage quotas" and 12-hour workdays are destroying morale among their ranks.

About a dozen representatives of the local, 300-member Service Employees International Union orbited City Hall for about an hour with signs reading "Garbagemen are not Supermen" and "Garbagemen are People Too."

The trash haulers were protesting a reduction in trash collection routes from 14 to 10, and a switch to four-day weeks rather than five-day weeks.

They say the change, which began Jan. 18, has forced them to work 12-hour days to meet the demand for garbage collection.

"The men are exhausted," union vice president George Hurley said. "And the city's starting to look like a pig-pen."

And with four routes eliminated, the haulers say they are forced to meet a daily quota of 10 tons of garbage to avoid being assigned to a "lot clearing crew."

But Public Works Director Jarvis Middleton said the garbage haulers have misunderstood the change.

"Nobody's losing their job, but they seem to think they are," Middleton said. Garbage haulers are not working on lot clearing crews, he said.

The city cut four garbage collection routes, but those haulers now drive trucks in other city departments, allowing the city to form a lot clearing crew with lower-paid city laborers, he said.

And the four displaced garbage haulers could be rotated back onto garbage trucks -- replacing haulers that collect the least amount of trash -- but no one has requested it.

The garbage collectors say the changes have forced them to work from 6 a.m. until as late as 9 p.m.

"The people don't even know there's only one man (per truck) picking up their garbage," trash collector Leonard Smith said.

Union attorney Steve Bloom said he has written to the city asking officials to reconsider the change, but has not received a response.

This week, he filed an unfair labor practices complaint with the state, asking that the city be forced to reconsider the changes.

"These men have the dirtiest, toughest, most physically demanding job in the city," Bloom said. "They are busting their humps every day."

Middleton, who has been public works director since last August, said the changes were necessary to eliminate inefficiency.

Often, he said, haulers would work only 28 hours a week, but get paid for 40, because they finished their daily routes early.

He stands by the changes.

"We're prepared to see them in court, if that's where they want to go with it," he said.